


lost in admiration

by bevcrushers (dothraloki)



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Background Tom/Harry, F/F, Friendship, Maquis, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 13:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21732652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dothraloki/pseuds/bevcrushers
Summary: She pauses. Anyone she knows – anyone who would care enough to write her – is either on the Klingon homeworld or gone.-b'elanna recieves an unexpected letter from a lost friend
Relationships: Ro Laren/B'Elanna Torres
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	lost in admiration

**Author's Note:**

> this pairing has always fascinated me! i so wish they'd met in canon
> 
> title taken from head over heels by tears for fears

“This better be important, Seven,” says B’Elanna, arid, as the doors slide open. “I was right in the middle of something.”

“I don’t know about important.” Harry barely looks up from his console. “A message came in for you.”

B’Elanna glares over at the back of Seven’s head. She’s yet still to acknowledge her, fingers tapping idly on the keypad below. “You brought me in here for mail? You realise this work is time sensitive, right?”

Seven turns, chin tilted, nonchalant as always. Not for the first time B’Elanna is reminded of classes on Earth history, of old nobility, aristocrats who walked like the world was theirs, noses tipped to the skies. “The Captain instructed me to inform the crew when messages arrive from the Alpha Quadrant.”

A brief stand-off ensues -B’Elanna’s arms crossed over her chest, versus Seven’s arched eyebrow. From the corner of her eye, she notices the looks Harry's sending her - _stand down, this isn’t worth it._

She sighs. Concedes. Tonight isn’t the night.

“Well, when the Captain asks why repairs aren’t finished by tomorrow morning, I’ll send her your way.” A brief flash of bemusement crosses Seven’s face as she hands the PADD over. B’Elanna sours. “A joke, Seven.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

B’Elanna’s already out of the room, labcoat swinging at her waist, and down the hallway before Harry snickers.

-

She forgets about the message almost immediately.

Repairs are extensive. She turns in at about two in the morning. Her bones ache, satisfying and _good_, heavy with the gratification of a job well done. She eases out the knots and kinks under the shower, letting the pulses gently ease away the grime and dirt of another day in Engineering.

And then she climbs under the bedsheets, heavy as the moon, and lets sleep take her.

-

Harry’s always so chipper first thing in the morning. She adds it to his – admittedly small – list of major character flaws.

B’Elanna, on the other hand, would be the first to admit to her reliance on a daily shot of caffeine to catapult at her warp six straight into the drudgery of the morning - especially on days like these when lethargy clung at her like a needy child. Harry, seemingly runs on nothing but a ferocious yet ever-present desire to be the most upstanding Starfleet officer the Delta Qudrant had ever seen.

“You didn’t even glance over it?” he’s saying as he follows her into the turbolift. “Not even once?”

“Deck two,” she looks up at him. “I barely had time to _blink _yesterday afternoon. Not helped by that nice little interruption from everyone’s favourite Borg, by the way –"

“Don’t blame Seven,” says Harry. “She’s just following the Captain’s orders.”

B’Elanna hums. “To the letter, I see.”

The door opens and with it her focus on the mess hall sharpens. Harry hurries to keep up with her.

“You weren’t even curious?”

“I didn’t have time to be curious,” she fires back. “What don’t you understand about total systems repairs?”

The door opens as somebody – Davids from security– leaves with two bagels and a handful of PADDS balanced precariously in her arms. The waft of coffee, or Neelix’s approximation of it, hits her so hard she barely registers the sight of Paris waving at them.

“Looks like Tom’s already brought coffee,” Harry notes as they make their way over. “That_ is_ why you’re acting like a bloodhound, right?”

B’Elanna brushes off the sharp edge of irritation as she slides into her usual seat opposite. She takes the mug without greeting and downs a lungful, barely bristling at its heat.

Tom regards her, amused. “Thirsty?”

“I wouldn’t try it if I were you, Paris,” she grits out. “Harry’ll tell you.”

“Engineering,” Harry translates as he takes the seat beside Tom, pressing a quick kiss into his jaw. “Well, hey, if the system repairs are done, why don’t you take a look at it today?”

She places the mug down on the table with a heavy thud and glares at him. “Let me ask you a question, Harry: why are_ you_ so hung up on this message?”

Harry’s face contorts like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. He tries to share a look with Tom who’s studiously observing his own bowl of oatmeal.

B’Elanna scowl deepens. She sits back in her seat, surveying them both like jesters in her own personal court. “You read it, didn’t you?”

Honesty bursts out Harry like a broken dam. “I peeked – that’s all. And just the first line. It was an accident, really.”

“Right.”

“B’Elanna," he says, exasperated, as if he were the one that ought to be frustrated. "It came from a Federation_ prison_.”

She pauses.

Anyone she knows – anyone who would care enough to write her – is either on the Klingon homeworld or _gone._

Tom’s sitting forward in his seat, the trace of a grin on his face. “You have to admit that’s piqued your interest, hasn’t it?”

“I _will _admit that I want to throttle you both.”

-

She flings her jacket on the bed and collapses onto the sofa, an EPS grid induced headache already in full bloom. Debating whether or not replicate herself a glass of wine and call it a night, her gaze lands on stack of PADDs lying on the table beside.

She chews her lip.

While she truly doesn't want to give those two _idiots_ the satisfaction, Tom wasn't wrong - she _is_ interested.

-

Stardate: 4677.82

Apartment H

Starfleet Correctional Facility

San Francisco, USA.

_Torres._

_I’m not quite sure what to say. I’ve been sat staring at this PADD for forty-five minutes. It’s weird, when they told me about you, about Voyager, a million thoughts came to mind. Then they all seemed to disappear overnight. And now I’m looking at this PADD and I don’t know what to tell you._

_ I never expected to have to do this._

_They told us your ship was lost. You – Chakotay, Seska and the others. It’d probably sound a lot more poignant if I said I never gave up hope, but the truth is, it seemed like a sure thing. A year went by, the Val Jean was missing with all hands, and there were other things to focus on. I never let myself think about it. It seemed pointless. _

_Then the war happened. And I guess, all of a sudden, I had a lot of time on my hands. But I’m sure you know about that already._

_I’m in a Starfleet compound, now. Well, have been for a few years. They treat me surprisingly well. Though I suspect with all the rebuilding, a disgraced Starfleet lieutenant and former Maquis is low down on their list of problems. I’m lucky, I guess, that they found me before the Cardassians did. At least that’s what they kept telling me all the way through the trial. Except I suspect it has substantially more to do with certain well-meaning Starfleet captains playing marionette behind the curtains. _

_They told me you’re all still years away but they’re doing everything they can to get you back to the Alpha Qudrant sooner. I’m not holding my breath, but I can’t stop thinking about it either. I keep wondering how you are. If you look still look the same. If you’re still banging into walls and throwing your hyperspanner across the room and getting into fights with people over which way to configure the EPS grid. I hope you still are. They told us Voyager’s still a Starfleet vessel but somehow I can’t picture you in uniform. _

_I hope you’re okay, Torres. Hope everyone is. I’m sure you have stories from the Delta Quadrant. I look forward to hearing them._

_Don’t be a stranger. _

_Ro._

-

She doesn’t look up when she hears the sound of the mess hall doors – doesn’t need to, to know it’s Harry emerging out of the shadows, still clad in his gold uniform. She’s watching the stars. Not that it brings much comfort. On days like today, the starkness of space only reminded her of that insurmountable distance from home. Harry seems to sense it too, because he says nothing as he takes the seat opposite hers, accompanying her in the silence.

Then eventually, she turns to him. Her body feels like iron, stiff and heavy and unused, and with a breath that bears down on her she says, “It turns out not every Maquis was wiped out by the Dominion.”

That does seem to surprise him. He sits back in his seat, watching her carefully. “Surely that’s a good thing?”

“Sure,” says B’Elanna. “Sure it is. But.”

How to describe the feeling that you were were seeing a ghost?

“You’d made your peace with it,” he offers.

She nods, absently drawing shapes with her finger on the ceramic mug. “I don’t know who else there is,” she says. “If it’s just her, or…” she trails off, staring down at her now tepid cup of Deka tea.

“Have you spoken to Commander Chakotay?”

“Not yet.” It sends a twinge of guilt hurtling down her spine. She had meant to, but it just _couldn't_ yet. “I think I just need to sit with it for a while.”

Harry nods in silent understanding – understanding that B’Elanna, herself, doesn’t share. Her mind echoes with chaos, so many thoughts wrapped up in one another, interrupting one another, incomprehensible. Her chest burns with a kind of anger that contained within it a desperate sadness. She doesn’t know why.

“Who is she?” Harry asks, gentle, after a moment or two.

B’Elanna snorts. “That’s a good question.”

Ro was steel, hard and sharp and precise - serious to most, if you weren’t looking properly. Stubborn as an ox, but with the kind of intelligence that intimidated. It certainly intimidated her. B’Elanna remembers the first time they met, an incident that very nearly led to a brawl over a warp nacelle pylon of all things. Seska had dragged her away ignoring the Klingon insults B’Elanna had hurled at both of them.

“You need to play _nice,” _Seska’s tone was acid. “She knows things. Things that could be useful. About the _Federation_.”

It wasn’t her insight into the Federation that B’Elanna cared about. It was everything else. It was the way she walked with a kind of strength forged out of unspoken darkness. Of course, B’Elanna had never asked her about it. Every Maquis had their demons and Ro was no different – except she carried herself as if she’d fought those demons and _won._

“A friend,” B’Elanna says to Harry, eventually. “Sort of.”

Ro brought out a side of her that was especially volatile. Sometimes that meant blistering arguments over matters that were, in hindsight, trivial. It meant butting heads often and viciously, B’Elanna, desperate to prove her knowledge – Ro, arrogant in her supposed wealth of experience. More than once, B’Elanna had cursed Starfleet, the _Enterprise,_ Jean-Luc Picard and every paragon of virtue Ro seemed to lift up on a golden pedestal.

But sometimes it meant a kind of uncertainty that had turned her stomach tight into knots. It meant sitting in briefings, trying not to glance over. It meant an unspoken thing that B’Elanna felt with her entire body during both the worst of their spats, and rarer moments of somewhat harmonious co-operation. It meant endless frustration that seemed to boil over into nothingness – and _that _was the most frustrating thing of all.

Harry’s still looking at her. “Just a friend?”

B’Elanna’s eyes narrow.

“I’m just saying,” he throws up his hands, defensive. “We’re friends. You and Tom are friends. I’ve never seen you act like this over either one of us.”

Friendship was where it ended, officially at least, but perhaps he had a point. She’s be lying if she said she never thought there might be more; moments where banter ran close to the edge of flirtation.

And the funny thing is, when B'Elanna blinks she can recall all of it. The smell of rusted iron. The feel of thick calluses on the tips of her fingers. The sound of voices, clamoring together, talking over one another, a kind of organized chaos that Seven would no doubt disapprove of.

The Maquis days weren't better, just different.

And, Ro wasn't even always there. Now and then she'd turn up to lend a hand, to offer knowledge, advice, tactical information. But despite the fierce bickering, B'Elanna couldn't help but sit in anticipation of the days Ro did arrive, bag hurled over her shoulder, eyebrows knitted together in permanent solemnity. They were indirect colleagues, one-and-one moments were few and far between, such was the nature of the Maquis.

But there was that time in the shuttle, on the way to a mission on the edge of the Badlands. The Cardassians had taken a successful shot at them and she’d been forced to make repairs on the move. Once Ro had managed to stabilise the navigation console, she’d gazed down at B’Elanna jerry-rigging the photon torpedo tubes - B'Elanna had stripped down to her undershirt, pulling her hair back as she worked with efficient, precise haste.

The look Ro’d given her had sent heat prickling across her skin. And when Ro spoke, her voice was deeper than B’Elanna usually heard it. “You’re not all that bad at that, Torres.”

“Still can’t bring yourself to recognise my genius,” B’Elanna had joked over her shoulder, but her mouth had gone dry.

Ro hadn’t even smiled. Her gaze was dark. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

A moment that was terse – a moment that passed when another began, an alert blaring nosily. And Ro – ever the professional – had turned her attention abruptly away.

And there had been that other time, after the raid on Cardassia Six that had resulted in the acquisition of another shuttlecraft. B'Elanna had spent the afternoon stripping the outer hull, and updating the old, Cardassian computer before she'd been coaxed away by Chakotay and the others to join the rest, eating and drinking by the fire.

And the alcohol _had_ flowed. In the midst of the hubub she and Ro had found one another, leaning comfortably, easily, recklessly into one another as they joked with Seska, Hogan and Kimiko - more familiar than either one of them would've dared to have been if they were sober. She remembers laughing, and laughing and laughing -

The groups had mixed and dwindled as people had tailed off or paired off, but still B'Elanna had hung by her side, trying not to focus on the way Ro's gaze made her feel, the way her toothy grin had made her stomach flip, with a kind of anticipation she couldn't quite rationalise -

"Come get another drink with me?" Ro had said. And B'Elanna had obliged, watching as she poured them two classes of Bajoran summer wine, watching her strong hands on the glass bottle, the dip of her eyelashes.

"What?" Ro had caught her staring, a grin on her face.

"Nothing," B'Elanna couldn't have helped but smile back. And there was that_ flip_ again. "I'm just so glad we never met at the Academy."

Ro had tipped her head, playfulness in her eyes. When she stepped closer, B'Elanna's breath had caught, sharp. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

She'd opened her mouth to respond - but that's when Chakotay had appeared from somewhere behind her, all apologies and smiles, and muttered to her something about the warp engine on their new ship, _"but only if you can get around it to it."_

"That's alright," Ro had said, straightening up. "Thinking about it, it's probably time I turned in, too. I try not to leave it this late."

"You're leaving?"

"I am," a brief flash of reluctance had crossed her face. And then her eyes had trailed over B'Elanna again, making her flush warm. "See you around, Torres."

They'd never spoken about it since. To be fair, there _hadn’t been_ much time after that. That doesn’t mean B’Elanna hadn’t thought about it.

It wasn't quite hero worship, though it might've come close to it. B'Elanna was smart enough, aware enough to tell the difference, even then. Instead, it was the worst sort of mutuality. The kind of bitterness of words unspoken, the kind of intimacy of fingers brushing accidently, the kind of anticipation of eyes darting away, hastily, trying to avoid detection.

B'Elanna blinks away memories, watching the colors fade in front of her eyes like images from the holodeck. Memories that had haunted her for the last three hours, memories she'd turned over and over in her mind, that'd brought with them all the complicated feelings that had clouded her then and threatened to do so now. She thinks there's a kind of torment in it.

“It was never anything more than friendship,” says B’Elanna to Harry, insistent, and maybe there’s an edge of reluctance in her voice, because Harry’s looking at her with something like sympathy in his eyes. He _knew_ something about pining.

“Are you going to write her back?”

“Why should I?” B’Elanna demands. “It’s not as if it’s going to get us home any faster. We’re still _decades_ away.”

“Maybe,” he admits, honestly. “But would it hurt?”

“But what’s the point?” she glances down at her mug again, watching the milk swirling on the surface. “I’m on Voyager, she’s on Earth – by the time we get back – _if_ we get back -”

Harry shakes his head. “Because, B’Elanna, it’s a second chance. Take it.”

_Don’t be a stranger._

She thinks about Ro composing the letter, pacing the length of her apartment. She wonders how she’s changed, how she looks – whether she still wears her earring on the wrong side, if she still has that resolute hardness just behind her eyes, whether she still carries herself _like_ _that._

Her stomach flips, and the urge to know becomes a hunger.

-

It’s gone midnight when B’Elanna finally returns to her cabin.

She turns on the lights halfway, replicates herself a cup of strong coffee and picks up the discarded PADD on her sofa.

And then, without pausing to think about it, she begins to write.


End file.
